THE GLORY OF RECONCILIATION IN CHRIST!

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GOD’S MYSTERIOUS PLAN IS REVEALED

God’s plan has always been to have his Son, Jesus, to be preeminent in all things. “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities–all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything” (Colossians 1:16-18).

Even before the fall of Adam God’s plan has been in place. We are told Jesus is the Lamb of God who was slain from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8). In other words the fall didn’t take God by surprise and His plan has not been changed. It’s as if God started this whole thing with Adam, knowing He would fall into sin, so He made provision long before in the death of Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son. While this may be a bit difficult to get our minds around we understand there is an invisible realm just as there is a visible one and we’re talking about God who is Spirit.

Dan Stone, the author of the book “The Rest of The Gospel”, defines this using a line. He shows how everything above the line is in the Eternal, invisible, Spirit realm and everything below the line is the Temporal, visible, matter realm. While we live in both realms here on Earth we are called to walk by faith rather than sight, so once we discover who God is, and what he has provided for us in Christ in the eternal, invisible, Spirit realm, we look there to understand the reality of what is going on in our lives rather than being conformed to the temporal, visible realm.

Once you start to see the truth behind Dan’s line illustration you will understand what the fall and salvation of man really means. You see when Adam fell he fell from above the line living into below the line living. The fall means He no longer lived according to the unseen but started living by what he saw and felt. Notice how immediately after eating the forbidden fruit “They” saw that they were naked. They became body conscious and lost sight of the Spirit realm. It was true when the Serpent told them if they ate the fruit their eyes would be opened, but He didn’t tell them they would also be closed to the Spirit. They literally fell below the line.

With all this being said, think with me for a minute about what God did in order to rescue the now spiritually blind, and in fact dead, human race. You see the day Adam ate of the tree he really did die. His spirit was deadened to God’s Spirit so God didn’t just have to forgive us of our sins He had to resurrect our dead human spirit. How would this be accomplished? Well, He would have to take on flesh and descend below the line in order to save us. He had to come where we were in order to lift us back to where we were always meant to be; so God became man. The Eternal put on the temporal, the invisible became visible and Spirit manifested in matter.

Since Adam’s fall meant mankind’s death, or separation from God, He had to initiate the rescue effort. I mean there isn’t anything a dead man can do to give himself life, right? God became a man, lived a perfect sinless life, died a sinners death, God raised him back and He ascended to the right hand of the Throne on High. Wow! God, Jesus fully human and fully God, willingly became a human in order to bring us back to our rightful place. Not only did he become man “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus took upon himself what killed us in order to give us His Eternal life. “He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach” (Colossians 1:22). God’s Spirit can now reside in us: His Eternal life dwelling in our temporal bodies. We now have a resurrected human spirit joined to God’s Spirit in a fallen body but we live looking forward to the day when our new heavenly bodies will manifest.

The Apostle Paul tells us this message of the Gospel was a mystery but it is now revealed, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. You see the mystery of God is Christ Himself (Colossians 2:2) who is in the believer (Colossians 1:26-27) and He is their life (Colossians 3:4). The mystery of God is Christ but there’s more. The mystery of Christ is His body which is made up of the many believers who have been born again of His Spirit and just as Jesus Christ was the full expression of God in human form we the body are the expression of Christ (Ephesians 3:4-6), (Ephesians 1:22-23). Therefore, Christ and the church–His body– are the great mystery (Ephesians 5:32).